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The nuclear plant, located in Morong on the Bataan peninsula, is the current object of outrage by members of the scientific community and anti-corruption watchdogs throughout the Philippines. The plant was started in 1976 at an estimated cost of US$600 million. By the time it was finished in 1984 the price tag was US$2.3 billion – the price bloated by cronies of former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos to ensure fat kickbacks for the ruling president’s group at the time.
The government was paying some US$300,000 a day on interest alone, essentially Filipino taxpayers money, on a loan sourced for Westinghouse, the plant builder, under the auspices of and guaranteed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
An editorial in the leading Manila-based broadsheet, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said the debt was not fully paid until 2007. By then the Manila government had shelled out a total of 64.7 billion pesos (US$1.36 billion), one-third of it for interest payments. And for all the billions taken from people’s pockets, the country has yet to enjoy a single watt of electricity.
The construction of the plant was widely opposed in the 1980s by various sectors because of the grave risk it posed to millions of people in Bataan, Zambales and Bulacan provinces, including those living in the Manila region. At the time, thousands of people from local communities marched from their villages to key urban centers, then to Manila and back to the nuclear plant site, to resist the nuclear undertaking of the Marcos dictatorship.
Bowing to public pressure, the government of former President Corazon Aquino decided to stop the project – but not the payment of loans, including the interest.
Now, almost 25 years later, Mark Cojuangco, representative of Pangasinan province, is seeking to revive the nuclear plant project. He has filed a bill in the House of Representatives seeking to allocate US$1 billion for its repair and rehabilitation. The legislative initiative to revive the project has stirred outrage among local scientists, churchgoers and local community members, including the fisher folk and farmers in the region where the mothballed nuclear power plant is located.
Professor Roland Simbulan of the University of the Philippines, former chairperson of the Nuclear Free Philippines Coalition, cited a study by U.S. nuclear scientist Robert Pollard who had inspected the Bataan-based nuclear plant, to register his opposition against the revived nuclear project.
According to Simbulan, Pollard had studied the possible impact of the nuclear project and concluded that it was not safe, as it used an old design plagued with unresolved safety problems, which made it a potential hazard to public health and safety. The U.S. scientist had pursued research on the plant in the early 1980s after the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979, where a core meltdown in a pressurized water reactor resulted in the release of radioactive krypton.
Renowned Philippines geologist Kelvin Rodolfo said, aside from being dangerous to the environment and human lives, the Philippines is not ready for this kind of nuclear power given the incapacity of the current government to handle nuclear waste; the waste from the nuclear plant will outlast the Philippine civilization.
In a forum hosted by the scientist group Agham and environmental groups under the Philippine Climate Change Alliance, Rodolfo stressed that it was arrogant to produce nuclear waste, which would last two or even three times longer than human history.
According to the Philippine-based geologist, the United States Geological Survey recorded at least six earthquakes in sites near Mt. Natib and the site where the plant is located. Rodolfo said uranium is not carbon-free as proponents of nuclear energy have been claiming.
He said fossil fuels are still used to mine, mill and process uranium before it reaches a reactor and every watt of electricity generated by a nuclear power plant makes around 30 percent as much carbon as a watt generated by burning fossil fuel, further complicating the problem of global warming.
Professor Giovanni Tapang, also a renowned scientist and physicist from the University of the Philippines, said the risks in getting the nuclear plant online would outweigh the benefits of the 620 megawatts of electricity it could generate.
According to Tapang, building geothermal, hydropower, natural gas, wind and solar power plants can address the projected shortage of 3,000 megawatts of electricity in 2012 without having to operate a nuclear plant. He said unused geothermal plants across the country could still generate 750 megawatts of electricity, which are risk free and cheaper sources of power for the 90 million Filipinos.
Based on the views of foreign and local scientists, and from the political and moral perspectives of groups and individuals opposing the revival of the nuclear plant, the Manila government should stop pursuing the project and instead focus on sourcing energy from alternative, cheaper and safer sources of energy.
But the Manila government under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo seems unwilling to listen. Arguments presented by its top officials suggest their intention to generate investment – and pocket huge commissions from investors.
In seeking to revive the nuclear project, the Manila government is pursuing the same goals that motivated the Marcos government 34 years ago. It is now ready to gamble the lives and the future of Filipinos for its own narrow interests.
Arroyo is unlikely to give up the task of reviving the plant, leaving Filipinos no option but to rise to the occasion and stop the sleeping monster from waking up.
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(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also currently, the head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is www.pampil.wordpress.com, and he can be contacted at themanager98@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Gerry Albert Corpuz.)
